Our Love is Forever
by Straggletag
Summary: A short AU look at a world where Edward does not agree to let Bella become a vampire, and the consequences of his descision


(A/N) A little AU in which Edward never agrees to Bella becoming a vampire.

…

Our Love Will Be Forever

Once, a long time ago, Bella Swan told Edward Cullen that she loved him and wanted to be with him forever. She asked him to make her one of his kind

Edward wanted to. He wanted her for forever; the missing piece of himself. But he didn't want to condemn her, to take away her soul and her warmth and her life.

Edward refused.

And then he forbade Carlisle, or Alice, or any of the others, to do so in his place. He told them his reasons and, because they loved him, they obeyed.

It took a long time for Bella to realise that he would never budge on the matter.

One night, when she was twenty-two, he asked her to marry him.

She stared at him, her mind still a mystery, and moved away from where they had been lying, fully clothed, on the bed he didn't need. She looked at the clock, pretending that she hadn't been watching it all day.

"I promised Jake I'd visit," she said.

Edward held her close, breathing in the exquisite scent of her. "Be careful," he warned, and then she was gone.

A year later the Cullens moved away from Forks. Bella went with them and got a job while the rest attended their next high school. She and Edward lived in a small house separate from the main family's. Edward let her decorate it.

In their bedroom she placed a huge mirror on the wall facing the bed. Every morning, when she awoke, Bella looked into it and saw that she had aged another day and that Edward had stayed seventeen.

One night, when she was twenty-five, she pushed him onto the bed and straddled him. She unbuttoned her shirt and took off her bra and kissed him on the lips before placing his hands on her breasts.

"I'll hurt you," Edward could barely keep his control. She pleaded with him and cajoled him. She unzipped his jeans and touched her fingers to the hardness she found there. He reacted by squeezing her delicate flesh just a little too hard. She winced.

He wrenched himself away, overcome with guilt.

"GOD!" Bella hit the wall in frustration. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be a twenty-five year old virgin?"

Edward did.

"I love you, isn't that enough?"

Bella had good genes. She aged well. When she was thirty years old she looked as if she was still twenty-two. She stopped trying to force him into having sex with her and instead contented herself with having him lay beside her while she masturbated.

Sometimes she left him to go and visit Charlie or Renee. She didn't allow him to come with her. He followed anyway and watched her from the shadows.

He heard Charlie ask her "Are you happy?" and Renee ask "Don't you want children, darling?" She answered yes and then no.

Edward couldn't read her mind. He had to believe what she said out loud.

When she was thirty-two, she suddenly looked thirty-two. Edward pretended that she didn't, but one day he came home from school to discover the bedroom mirror smashed and the dresser drawers filled with anti-aging creams.

When she was thirty-three, after they had celebrated her birthday by ignoring it, she lied and told Edward that she was going to visit Charlie.

She went to Forks, but she went to see Jacob.

Jacob had aged after the Cullens had left. He look manly and mature. He looked as if he had lived and suffered without her.

Edward didn't watch them through the window, but he heard Jacob's thoughts. He heard his love for Bella, he heard his awe at her beauty, he heard his completion.

Jacob asked her to stay with him.

"I can't" Bella said, "I love _him_."

She loved Edward for ten more years, until she looked old enough to be his mother. Then she began to shrink away from him, to dim the lights and to hide her face. She began to sleep in her make-up, running to the bathroom every morning to make sure that her foundation was covering every new wrinkle. She never went out with him.

"People will stare," she said, "you look like my son."

The day she left him, Edward begged her to stay.

"I'll change you," he pleaded, "don't leave me."

Bella laughed hollowly and looked down at the boy on his knees before her. "It's no use now," she said, looking at her aged hands as she spoke, "I don't want to live forever like _this_."

She cried as she left.

She went to live with Jacob. They never had children, they simply grew old together, sitting on the porch; gray haired and sipping glasses of iced tea. It was as easy as breathing.

When she died, a month after Jacob, Edward went to Volterra and stepped out into the sunlight. After the Volturi killed him, his soul went to heaven.


End file.
